dESIGN12+ #10: Amarnath Praful

40 minutes + 20 minutes Q&A, moderated by Prof. Jörg Winde (International Representative)
Note: This guest lecture is held in English

This lecture presentation serves as an introduction to contemporary photography practice in India. Using eclectic and specific examples, the first part of the lecture will aim to develop a common thread that considers photography against the backdrop of modernity in post-independent India and the country's subsequent economic liberalization in the 1990s. The second part of the talk will examine the current landscape of contemporary photography practice in India. Shifting frequently between time periods, we will explore how various aspects of representation, landscape, archive, community, family, identity, internet and ecology are being addressed by photographers - in response to the many particular contexts and constant flux that the country finds itself in.

About our speaker:

Amarnath Praful is a visual artist, writer and teacher who works primarily with the medium of photography. His artistic and academic practice explores elements of performance, text, video, archive and found material. The landscape, folk and oral traditions, modernity and cultural-political history of Kerala, India, often form the basis of his work. His pedagogical concerns, on which he writes and teaches, are contemporary photographic practices, representational politics, the history of photography in the subcontinent, intermedial image practices and film studies. He is a faculty member of the Masters in Photography Design program at the National Institute of Design, Gandhinagar, India.